In an older age, when neatly uniformed armies fought great pitched battles, there would eventually come a time when the leaders would gather around a table and sign a peace treaty. But we do not seem to live in that age any more.
Today, it's all guerrilla warfare, and so long as some bands want to keep fighting, it's very hard for anyone, on either side, to get them to stop. Each individual on that side will fight until a precision guided weapon takes him out. But a replacement is probably close to hand.
I would suggest that our smart weapons are impressive, but have not caused our enemies to sue for peace. I would further suggest that indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of men, women, and children is quite likely to cause our enemies to sue for peace.
It's common for Americans to say "We don't want to push too hard -- we might make them angry!"
I say: They attacked NYC and killed thousands of us. Nothing that we do is going to encourage them to be more fanatic than they already are. We need to make them BEG for peace.
The old ways are the best ways.
If we kill indiscriminately, it proves what they are saying about us and recruits flow like water. When we kill individually, the populace realizes it could have been them, and turn in and stop supporting the Jihadists.
In Iraq, we killed enough of the Jihadists, that the normal populace could turn the others in without threat of retaliation. The difference is the proximity of Pakistan which keeps producing recruits.
The good news is that we have body-tagged so much of their leadership, that the ones who take their place are nowhere near as competent and lose even more battles. But eventually, if we kill enough, they will stop fighting. They won't sue for peace, they just will turn to blowing up their own people in Pakistan or wherever they are.